The Inquisitive One looked for a moment as if he would protect his breast pocket; but fighting was getting stale, and so he handed over the instrument, the man who took it wiping it on a dirty sleeve before he plunged into the strains of "Rule Britannia!" As he played there was a movement among those near the door. Candlass was there, but he lingered outside until the air was finished and then—"Feed and water, boys," he said, looking in, and as his men defiled into the passage Rafferty arrived.
"Come on wid youse, lower deck!" he bawled. His men filed out fairly orderly. It was only at the morning call that they were still inclined to be cross-grained.
Affairs were settling down into the routine of the trip. There was, indeed, a spirit of friendliness growing among the "Push." Free of liquor, and of the after effects of liquor, the largeness of heart of many was evident, though perhaps there was something morbid, as well as of kindly interest, in their sympathy that they lavished on little Michael. He had his head turned over it, spent most of his spare time sitting on the edge of his bunk, holding up his head to let them look at his eye under the shade. Cockney and he, if they had not yet made friends exactly, had allowed the matter of their fight on the poop to be as an ancient matter now forgotten. The bad eye might have been the result of an accident for all that was said about Cockney by those who looked at it; indeed Cockney was the only one who seemed to recall the origin of it. He sat apart, looking a little ashamed during these examinations of the injured member; but his shame soon began to give way to jealousy, for had he not a bandage on his head—had he not an interesting ear that might be pried at? Yet, take it by and large, as seamen say, a feeling of amicability came to the ship—that is to say by comparison with the spirit that had inhabited it so far. Had any quietist been spirited aboard upon an Arabian carpet he might well have been excused for stepping hastily on to it again, and most hastily murmuring the incantations that would speed his departure; but for those who had seen the "Push" with the drink in it, or the drink waning in it, the S.S. Glory was now almost on the way to being sacred!
The night-watchman, who slept away most of the day in Rafferty's cabin, was the most objectionable sight on deck. He always appeared at meal times, scooped up more than his share, then strolled about for a little while for a constitutional, but was never spoken to. As the days wore on, however, he spoke to others in a manner horribly blending intimidation and fawning, his great moustache waving. He would plant himself in front of some member of the "Push" and explain that he had come down in the world, that he had a son in the Household Cavalry, six foot three, with a fist that would fell an ox. "If my son was on board," he would say, and glare, and if the glare was returned: "Oh, not that I mean anything," he would add. The cattlemen gossiped infinitely less than do people aboard a passenger ship, but it was inevitable that the watchman should be observed, and to some extent discussed.
"What was he saying to you?" asked Jack of a young man before whom the night-watchman had been peering and glaring and fawning.
"Oh, I don't know—about a son in the army, six foot three, knock the stuffing out of anybody. Says he's been divorced."
Mike, hanging over the rail, turned around.
"He's a lazy good-for-nothing, that night-watchman," he said. "It's a wonder to me youse fellows on the lower deck don't fix him. These last nights now we haven't had a dacent sleep for him waking Rafferty." He laughed. "I hear Rafferty says to him: 'Don't you waken me,' he says, 'if there are only one or two loose. Waken me if there's more than half-a-dozen.'" Mike paused, and then added: "But there always is half-a-dozen."
Some of the lower deck men within hearing grinned.
"Oh, I know what it is," said Mike. "Some of youse slips out at night and loosens them, so as to get back on Rafferty for treating you the way he does. It's cutting off your nose to spite your face, bringing Rafferty in at twilve, at wan, at two, and at three, roaring like hill for you to tumble up, and wakenin' us all. What was he after saying now, shoving his face at you, me lad, and waving his tusks at you in the wind? Was it about his tall son that has the strong arm?"